Using a “patient monitoring” device attached to a whale entangled in fishing gear, scientists showed for the first time how fishing lines changed a whale’s diving and swimming behavior. The monitoring revealed how fishing gear hinders whales’ ability to eat and migrate, depletes their energy as they drag gear for months or years, and can result in a slow death.
The scientists in this entanglement response suction-cupped a cellphone-size device called a Dtag to a two-year-old female North Atlantic right whale called Eg 3911. The Dtag, developed at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), recorded Eg 3911’s movements before, during, and after at-sea disentanglement operations. (more…)
TORONTO, ON – Many plants are self-fertilizing, meaning they act as both mother and father to their own seeds. This strategy – known as selfing – guarantees reproduction but, over time, leads to reduced diversity and the accumulation of harmful mutations. A new study published in the scientific journal Nature Genetics shows that these negative consequences are apparent across a selfing plant’s genome, and can arise more rapidly than previously thought.
In the study, an international consortium led by Stephen Wright in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto and Detlef Weigel at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology sequenced the genome of the plant species Capsella rubella, commonly known as Red Shepherd’s Purse. They found clear evidence that harmful mutations were accumulating over the species’ relatively short existence. (more…)
A tiny Australian songbird may hold the answer to discovering the biological source of stuttering, which affects 3 million Americans and is notoriously difficult to treat.
A team of Michigan State University scientists will investigate the brain and behavior of the zebra finch in the first in-depth study of whether stuttering stems from a lack of rhythm. (more…)
Brown University scientists have found that a species of bat uses blood flow to reshape its tongue while feeding. The quick dynamic action makes the tongue an effective “mop” for nectar and could even inspire new industrial designs. Findings are reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.(more…)
Butterflies are extremely sensitive to changes in temperature and new research has revealed that when summer weather turns bad the silver-spotted skipper battles for survival.
The butterfly, which previously faced extinction from habitat loss, is recovering following conservation efforts but the recent cool wet summers in England have almost stalled its progress.
A 27 year study by researchers at the University of Exeter in collaboration with the University of York, the University of Liverpool, Sussex Wildlife Trust, the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the charity Butterfly Conservation has been published in the journal Ecology Letters. The study estimated changes in temperature across a range of silver-spotted skipper habitats and found that localised fluctuations in temperature lead to extreme fluctuations in the butterfly population size and in the probability of the butterflies colonising new sites. (more…)
Sugar isn’t always sweet to German cockroaches, especially to the ones that avoid roach baits.
In a study published May 24 in the journal Science, North Carolina State University entomologists show the neural mechanism behind the aversion to glucose, the simple sugar that is a popular ingredient in roach-bait poison. Glucose sets off bitter receptors in roach taste buds, causing roaches to avoid foods that bring on this taste-bud reaction. This aversion has a genetic basis and it eventually spreads to offspring, resulting in increasingly large groups of cockroaches that reject glucose and any baits made with it.
In normal German cockroaches, glucose elicits activity in sugar gustatory receptor neurons, which react when exposed to sugars like glucose and fructose – components of corn syrup, a common roach-bait ingredient. Generally, roaches have a sweet tooth for these sugars. (more…)
LARAMIE, Wyo. — Migratory elk are coming back from Yellowstone National Park with fewer calves due to drought and increased numbers of big predators – two landscape-level changes that are reducing the benefits of migration with broader implications for conservation of migratory animals, according to a new study published in the journal Ecology.
The new study by the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit – a joint program involving U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Wyoming, and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, describes a long-term decline in the number of calves produced annually by the Clarks Fork herd, a population of about 4000 elk whose migrants travel annually between winter ranges near Cody, Wyoming and summer ranges within Yellowstone National Park. Migratory elk experienced a 19 percent depression in rates of pregnancy over the four years of the study and a 70 percent decline in calf production over 21 years of monitoring by the WGFD, while the elk that did not migrate, known as resident elk, in the same herd experienced high pregnancy and calf production and are expanding their numbers and range into private lands outside of the park. (more…)
The turtle has been in no rush to give up the secret of its shell — but after two centuries of close study, scientists are filling in the story of a structure unique in the history of life.
New research led by Tyler Lyson of Yale University and the Smithsonian Institution pushes back the origins of the turtle shell by about 40 million years, linking it to Eunotosaurus, a 260-million-year-old fossil reptile from South Africa. The work strengthens the fossil record and bolsters an existing theory about shell development while providing new details about its precise evolutionary pathway.(more…)
